Movie Reviews by Edwin Jahiel

LOVE AFFAIR (1939)

By Leo McCarey. One of Hollywood's best romances, producing a memorable couple (Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne) that performs superbly. Character actress Maria Ouspenskaya too has one of the top old lady roles ever filmed. A shipboard romance later turns to near catastrophe through misunderstanding and an accident. Humor and pathos mix, separate, re-mix, in this smooth but unslick, carefully crafted but not artificial, moving but unhokey gem, enhanced by the beautiful old French song "Plaisir d'Amour." The same director remade his own film in 1957 as "An Affair to Remember," with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr and a nice, sentimental song. This version became recently popular again after it was "quoted" in "Sleepless in Seattle." It is fine but the earlier movie is unbeatable. Then came the third edition, the 1994 "Love Affair" with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening - a fiasco, which, if anything, makes the original look even better, not that it needs any help.